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Hi Zapier community, 

 

I am trying to do something specific so I will try and lay out the use case and how I am going about it and where I am having trouble. 

 

Background:

I am using Monday as a CRM for lead management. Often the best form of communication is email and SMS messages. 

Monday has an update section for every item. Currently all emails 2 and from are automated and placed in the update column with integrations. For SMS I need to copy and paste the text messages in manually each time. 

 

What I am trying to do:

1- When Text comes in or goes out, it is forwarded in email format to a Zapier email address(done)

2- Zapier parses the info from the text so that it can pick up the phone number, incoming/outgoing status and the text from the message. (done)

3- Query the monday.com api to return any items with a matching number in the phone number column to the number picked up earlier (struggling)

4- Put the message from the text in the update section from the item/s found from the previous step. (need to do previous step first, will probably struggle)

 

 

How I am trying to achieve it:

Using a POST webhook with JSON string. Please note for monday POST is the only type of webhook to use with their v2 api. The JSON part of it will decide if you are trying to give or take info. 

 

Working to find item from phone number on 1 board. 

I am trying to find the item using the phone number from all boards or 4 boards specifically. 

I have been told by Monday.com that you can’t do a single call for more than 1 board with this type of query. I need to do 4 separate queries. When I press the “+” to add another row it comes up with errors after trying to add more calls. Saying the formatting isn’t acceptable. 

 

Any expertise or help on this will be much appreciated. I know it is quite specific and long winded so thank you for at least reading this far if you have. Open to other ideas, doesn’t just have to be webhooks. 

 

Looking forward to hearing back.  

 

Cheers,

 

Elliot. 

Hi @Elliot!

 

Could I check something? When you say that you’re getting an error about the formatting when you add more queries, is that when you test the step? ie you add in more queries in the Zap editor ok, but you get an error back from the Monday.com API, is that right? 

I’ve not used multiple queries in a webhook step before - when you hit the test button can you see the formatting of each query? If so, are you able to send that to the team at monday.com to see if they can spot why the API doesn’t like the format?

If you need more detail about what the hook looks like when it’s sent, you can ask the Zapier Support team to send you a gist of what the data looks like and the full error message that we got back. I hope that helps!

Hi @Danvers ,

 

Thanks for responding to this. 

I have heard back from Monday about this. They have confirmed that you can only query the API once with the webhook. The feature to add more lines must must have been put there by zapier so it would work with different API’s for different software’s. 

 

I ended up doing webhooks. It is actually an over complex process in my opinion, but it does work at the moment. 

 

For anyone that’s interested the current flow is:

  1. SMS received on phone
  2. third party app used to forward to email (zapier automated email)
  3. parsing engine picks out number, messege text and status of incoming or outgoing
  4. zapier filter checks if the number is any of my personal contacts(put in the numbers)
  5. If not a number then continues (task 1)
  6. then does a path of A=outgoing message or B=incoming message (1 task)
  7. either path do 1 webhook to check if an item on my monday board(sales board) matches the phone number from the text (1 task)
  8. Then a second webhook to check if an item on my monday board (event planning board) matches the phone number from the text (1 task)
  9. Then there is another path way C/E= item ID exists on sales board OR D/F= item ID exists on event planning board (1 task)
  10. If either of them exist then it will update the respective board and item with the message of the text. (1 task)

The reason I have an incoming or outgoing step is so that I can have “Elliot text: message text here” or “Customer name text: message text here” show up in the monday item update. It is much neater on the other end. 

 

For an unsuccessful message that gets through the first filter it is 4 tasks before being stopped by step 9.

For a successful update it is 6 tasks. 

 

I think I can reduce the steps of the unsuccessful texts by putting the board search first and having the incoming/outgoing filter later. 

 

The developer of the third party app is looking to have an option of blacking listing numbers that get forwarded so I won’t need the first filter step in the process. Obviously I would have to wait for that. 

 

I am not a coder but I am interested in trying to put together some PHP or Python or one of those code options on zapier to maybe condense some of these steps. 

 

Ideally the final result would be:

  1. SMS is pre-filtered by third party app
  2. email received by zapier as a trigger
  3. code is run to check boards for matching numbers and determine incoming outgoing status, then mutate board by adding text to item with matching number (1 task)
  4. Or update board with text message here is can’t be done in code step (OR 1 tast)

 

As it stands, even if all messages were successful ones. I have 2000 tasks per month. I can do 333 texts per month sent and received. That is if I am doing no other zaps. which I am so it is less than that. 

 

So unless I can get it down to 1 or 2 steps it is not really a viable option. 

 

There is a lot of information there I hope it helps someone haha. 

 

I would like help with the coding bit but I will probably have to figure that out on my own. 

 

Cheers,

 

Elliot. 

 

 

Thanks for sharing your workflow, @Elliot ! Tagging in coding guru @ikbelkirasan in case they have any quick suggestions here.

@ikbelkirasan- thanks in advance for any insight you may be able to provide!

Thanks Liz,

 

I have kind of got my head around the JSON formatting. And as far as I am aware I can call on Monday’s API using the Zapier code option. I just need to embed the JSON string into either:

  • Javascript 
  • PHP
  • Python

 

My questions for @ikbelkirasan  would be:

  1. How many steps can I fit into 1 zapier task using code?
  2. Which would be the best language to use from the top 3 to achieve this?

It would just be good to know if it is possible. If it is, I am happy to learn the skill and make it work as I can use it to shorten my other workflows also.

 

Looking forward to hearing back :)

 

Cheers,

 

Elliot. 

Hi @Elliot!

I just wanted to check in with you to see if you’d managed to get things working, or whether you could still use some help here. Please let us know :)

Hey @nicksimard , 

 

I have it working with too many steps. It’s ok at the moment because of COVID there is not as many enquiries so not as much conversation happening and I have just enough tasks each month. 

 

I am having an app built instead on the monday apps framwork and swapping to use JustCall.io as our communications. I have a professional using the API from both platforms to record calls and update texts etc onto Monday. 

 

So no help required at this stage. 

 

Cheers, 

 

Elliot. 

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